October 1, 2009
Global prosperity is just around the corner, says Atlantic Monthly and New Republic contributing editor Easterbrook (The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, 2003, etc.) in this upbeat view of the coming benefits of globalization.
The immediate economic outlook may seem gloomy, he writes, but history shows that whenever a trend like the rising prosperity of the past three decades is interrupted, the trend resumes. In this readable but slight, repetitive book, Easterbrook maintains that globalization has just gotten under way and will usher in a"hectic, high-tech, interconnected world" where most nations will enjoy the free-market advantages of the West. Most people's lives will be better, but the tremendous pressures of constant change will foster stress, anxiety and dissatisfaction. The author offers striking examples of globalization at work: the extraordinarily busy young port of Shenzhen, China; the burgeoning high-tech zone of the former factory town Waltham, Mass., and a Chinese home-appliance manufacturer's opening of its North American headquarters in sleepy Camden, S.C. Now notable, such outcomes will become commonplace, he writes, as global forces advance the spread of economic growth, a global middle class, free economics, democracy, technical progress, education, urbanization and entrepreneurialism. As it moves from the Factory Age to"a Sonic Boom era dominated by desk jobs and education," the world will provide higher-quality, less-expensive goods for all, as well as more competition and economic turmoil, compounded by the effects of climate change. There will also be more inequality of wealth as ideas become more valuable than labor and resources. While his prognostications are provocative, Easterbrook devotes much of the narrative to making familiar observations on the increasing stressfulness of modern life, the importance of education and ideas in an information-driven society and the need to be prepared for frequent job changes and hybrid careers. He also uses too many annoying cutesy terms, such as"Super Bowl of stress."
A disappointing update on globalization that nonetheless offers hope for the recession-mired.
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January 1, 2010
Easterbrook is the author of six books and contributing editor to the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic. In his previous book, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse (2003), he argued that, by all standards, American life has been getting better and better for generations, and compelled us to utilize our prosperity to improve the lives of the disenfranchised around the world. Here he extends his theory to the now-familiar territory of globalization, showing how since World War II the greatest nations of the world have put more of their resources into economic growth and less into military spending. According to Easterbrook, this has all been fueled by reductions in import tariffs and relaxed trade restrictions. Although the current global downturn puts a chink in the armor of his case, he still claims that the larger trend will continue to put pressure on nations to reduce violent conflict, increase the rights of women, and convert to free-market democracies. Easterbrooks power of economic positive thinking allows the reader to step back from the gloom and look at the larger picture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)